Success Stories

Sustainable Dairy

The Quarles & Brady Clean Energy, Climate Change & Sustainability Team helped a large dairy-cooperative plant and other local businesses develop a wastewater treatment plant that would also generate renewable energy. We coordinated efforts among three large dairy manufacturers, including our client, to form a joint venture. We then helped our clients and the municipality talk through and plan the project, secure the necessary permitting, find financing, and begin construction of the facility to take advantage of significant incentives available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The use of New Markets Tax Credits (NMTCs) lowered the costs of financing and put the facility in a position to operate profitably over the long term. We will continue to work on the project until the biomass facility is up and running, and when it is, it will reclaim the water used to process our client's food products, treat and send the reclaimed organic waste to local fields to be used as ecological fertilizer, and—along the way—employ anaerobic digestion to create electricity.